Learning About Ducks and Rocks - Mother Goose Time

This week we were learning about things we might see On the Lake.  Mother Goose Time set us up with some very fun activities for this week, and on Friday we combined Duck day and Rock day, and it was a lot of fun!

Usually Little Guy is dressed for school time, mainly because we take pictures, not because I am actually good at getting up and ready for the day.  But he had asked if he could do his Mother Goose Time in his pajamas, and since I am always wearing my pajamas I thought that was only fair!  I figure it can't hurt anything as long as I don't make a habit of it!

Little Guy did so well!  I think it might be time to start doing the assessment questions again.  I took a break from assessment after the first month or two, because it was stressing me out and making it unpleasant for Little Guy.  He just wasn't "passing" the assessment, which was making me feel like a failure and become rather pushy.  Now that he is three and a little more advanced, I think we can work on it again next month.

Every month along with our new storybook Mother Goose Time gives us a storytelling set.  It is a backdrop and play pieces that go along with the storybook.  Little Guy doesn't do great at retelling the story with the storytelling set, but he does excel at remembering the story.  This video is him "reading" this month's book.  I had read it to him once, and I think the girls read it to him once or twice, but mostly, he just has a crazy good memory.  The book is not holding up well, which is really surprising, because all of the other books have been really sturdy. 

Playing with the Storytelling Set

 There were a couple of activities today that really showed how much Little Guy has learned in the time we have been using Mother Goose Time.  Something that he really struggled with at the beginning was sorting things in one way, and then in another.  For instance he could sort the Safari Counters by color just fine, but if I then asked him to sort them by animal he messed up a lot.  On a different day I could ask him to sort them by animal and it was cake, but then he couldn't do it by color.  This time he sorted the Shape Links by color in about 30 seconds, then sorted them by shape quite accurately, although he did have more trouble than with the colors.

The Shape Links were baby ducklings, and we were sorting them into their correct nests.  This is what made the second sorting activity take WAY longer than the first.  He wanted us to both pet each of the baby ducklings.  He played multiple times, this lasted probably 20 minutes.

I was kind of lazy with this one.  We were supposed to do fun stuff like use Play-Doh, but I am lame and don't like to make messes if I can help it, and it was nearly lunch time.  So instead we made it work for us. 

Mother Goose Time is great about teaching children things that I would never really think to teach them.  I am more of a "bookwork" kind of person, reading, writing and arithmetic.  This activity was teaching Little Guy about directional words (above, below, behind, etc.).  The shape link was a duck egg, and we rolled the position cube to tell us where the egg should go.  Last time I remember doing a game to learn directional words he had some trouble with a couple of the words, but this time he did almost perfectly.  I did give him a couple hints, like how he could put it behind the "D", but definitely an improvement.

The most disappointing part of the day was after Mother Goose Time.  I had fully intended to take a field trip to the duck pond near our house, but instead Little Guy took at least an hour to eat his sandwich and craisins, making it nap time before we ever made it to the pond!

Next week we are onto learning about Soapy Water!

Little Guy and I get our Mother Goose Time curriculum for free in exchange for our honest opinions and sharing our experiences!  All opinions are my own :)